From Cafe Hayek, Uber vs Piketty by Don Boudreaux:

Thomas Piketty famously argues that owners of capital grab ever-larger shares of wealth, and that the single best ‘solution’ to this alleged problem is a global tax on wealth and high rates of income taxation.  Problems galore fill Piketty’s book – including his failure to recognize that market-driven innovation and competition are incessantly creating new capital while reducing or even destroying the value of older capital, all in ways that move new flesh-and-blood people into the central ranks of the ‘capitalists’ while moving others onto the periphery of those ranks.  (Twelve years ago Mark Zuckerberg, the son of a dentist, was no one’s idea of a capitalist.  He’s now worth close to $40 billion.)

Ashley had a brilliant insight, which I share here with her kind permission: Uber(and other ‘sharing economy’ innovations, such as Airbnb) allow ordinary people to turn their consumption goods into capital goods.

HKO

Capital is increasingly a human resource, rather than a material possession.  This simple truth makes Piketty’s thesis irrelevant.

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